Living Things
Living Things is the fifth studio album released by American rock band Linkin Park, which was released under Warner Bros. Records and Machine Shop Records on June 20, 2012, in Japan and throughout the rest of the world during the following week. Production was handled by Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin, who both co-produced Minutes to Midnight in 2007, and A Thousand Suns in 2010. The band states that Living Things combines elements from their previous four studio albums to create a new sound. They also stated that they finally felt they were in "familiar territory" and "comfortable in their own skin" after years of experimentation that resulted in their two previous studio albums, ''Minutes to Midnight'' and ''A Thousand Suns''. Living Things was chosen as the album's title because of the numerous personal topics on the album. The lead single for the album, "Burn It Down", was sent to radio and released to digital music retailers on April 16, 2012. Living Things debuted at number one on Billboard 200 with sales of 223,000 copies in the United States in its opening week. The second single for the album, "Lost in the Echo", was released on October 19, 2012. The third single for the album, "Castle of Glass", was released in its physical format on February 1, 2013, and digitally to iTunes on March 22, 2013. The album has sold 2.5 million copies worldwide as of December 2013. Background and recording In June 2011, lead singer Chester Bennington revealed to Kerrang! that Linkin Park had begun working on new material for their fifth album. He explained, "We've been working on a new record for the past two months. The music is great and we're well ahead of where we're expecting to be. There aren't a whole lot of noises going on, but there are a lot of good songs." The band's co-lead vocalist and rapper Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin served as producers for the album. "Typically we'll have a once-a-week meeting to go listen to the songs that they're coming up with and talk about them. For so early in the project, they are much further along than they have been on the last two albums we did. On A Thousand Suns, there were still a lot of irons in the fire. We knew, 'OK, we can't do this forever. Let's leave this batch and we'll come back and address it when we start up again'", Rubin said. Bennington explained that Rubin "gives us spaces to just be ourselves and to work on our own...He gives us a clear and concise description of what he likes...He would like us to push ourselves into a more fresh take on that particular sound." He also stated that Shinoda guides the band through the process of each song, and called the team-up of Shinoda and Rubin "our golden ticket." In July 2011, Bennington told The Rolling Stone that Linkin Park aims to produce a new album every eighteen months, and that he would be shocked if a new album did not come out in 2012. The band continues to record and produce new material even while touring. Bennington commented on Linkin Park's schedule, stating, "Touring for two years is excruciating. When we would tour for two years even the most resilient person in the band, at the end of that, was fucking miserable." He further elaborated on their ideas in an interview with MTV saying, "We do have a really great head start. We've got some great music, some good ideas. The creativity has continued to flow for us for the last few years, consistently." He later revealed in another interview in September 2011 that the band was still in the beginning phases of the next album, saying "We just kind of began. We like to keep the creative juices flowing, so we try to keep that going all the time...we like the direction that we're going in." Shinoda told Complex that they spent a year in making the album, as well as elaborating on the album's sound, saying that "It doesn't lose any of the creativity of the newer stuff and it brings in the energy of the older stuff. It's kind of a comprehensive sound. I feel like we've been able to take all the stuff we've learned on the way and put it all together in each song and still keep it fresh and forward-thinking." Shinoda told HitFix that the process of the album "felt like a drug trip...we were looking to redefine everything." Shinoda spoke to Co.Create about the album's art, saying that it will "blow fans away...the average person is not going to be able to look at it and go, I understand that that's completely new, like not just the image but the way they made the image is totally new. So there's going to be that." The band underwent 360 degree body scans for numerous lyric videos and artwork for the album. On April 9, 2012, the band released a teaser video for the album on Tumblr. The album's art was released on April 16, 2012, along with the album's first single, "Burn It Down". Composition In an interview featured in the March 21, 2012 issue of Kerrang! magazine, Bennington stated that the band has returned to more 'familiar' territory on their new record, saying "with this new album, we've incorporated a lot of guitar work with big choruses and the heavier electronic stuff to give it that really big wall of sound feeling without getting too metal. This will be more familiar to people than A Thousand Suns was, where we were like 'Fuck it, we're just going to go bonkers." Bennington also said that the new album's lyrics would be personal and avoid being political, adding "We've been writing a lot about relationships."Bennington and Shinoda echoed similar statements during an interview with Spin, with the former commenting that "We now know we have the skills and the tools to take those ideas and make them into what we're actually looking for, as opposed to getting into it and discovering that it just sounds really nü-metal. That's always going to be gross to us, but we can take elements of that and reinvent the vibe, make it new and fresh." The two previewed five songs from the album, as well as announced that they had collaborated with Canadian musician Owen Pallett. The vocalists also stated that they have adopted numerous influences and topics for the album, particularly about people. Bennington told Live 105 that the band is "embracing everything that they have done in the past," taking the "best pieces" of their previous four albums and "smashing them together into this new record." Shinoda explained in an interview with NME that the album would not return to their nu metal sound, however they assured that the record "gets back to our roots and it's captured a feeling that we haven't gone after in many years." He also spoke similar statements to Bennington about combining elements of all four albums, saying, "We've learned so much from all the albums we've done, so we've taken everything we've learned and mixed it all into one." Shinoda stated that the album is more "rap-centric" compared to their previous two albums. Shinoda told Musique Mag that the band wanted the album to be "more energetic and song-based", as opposed to their previous album, A Thousand Suns, which was more of a concept record. The band had numerous influences and inspirations for Living Things. Shinoda told Rolling Stone that "Skin to Bone" and "Roads Untraveled" contained folk music influenced by the works of Bob Dylan, as well as the inspirations of Dylan. In the seventh track "Victimized", which Rolling Stone described as "the band's most aggressive track in years", was influenced by punk rock bands such as Pennywise and Dirty Rotten Imbeciles. Shinoda noted the minimal content of numerous punk rock songs attributed to the short length of "Victimized"; bassist Dave "Phoenix" Farrell noted that the song's working title, "Battle Axe", "which to me is..what that song is; it's just this big 'crack' and then you're out." Like the band's first two albums, the penultimate track ("Tinfoil") is an instrumental. Brad Delson, the band's guitarist, has provided additional vocals in the tenth track "Until It Breaks", which was his idea. The album explores the genres alternative rock, electronic rock and rap rock. Production Chester Bennington described the album near the beginning of the writing process in May, 2011: "We've been working on a new record for the past two months. The music is great and we're well ahead of where we're expecting to be. There aren't a whole lot of noises going on, but there are a lot of good songs. It will probably get a very polarized reaction. Which pleases me. As an artist, I want a reaction." Adding that "We've learned how to write serious songs and serious lyrics. We've learned how to deal with politics, faith and other things. Those are things that can get preachy really quickly, which we don't want to do. So you need to learn to talk to people and not at people." But when the LPU chat room told Mike Shinoda what Chester said to the press, he expressed confusion. He said. "Polarize people? This album isn't NEARLY done. I have no idea," alluding to the possibility that the album can change dramatically from May 2011 to whenever the album is released. Thanks to technology, the writing equipment that the band depended on has shrunk in size. Mike Shinoda purchased a OP-1 synthesizer from Teenage Engineering, which is small enough to be placed in front of a laptop. Many of the components are now portable enough to be used in a car or at Starbucks, as Mike demonstrated though Twitter and YouTube. Chester also had this to say to Rolling Stone: "Mike Shinoda and I are out there with our studios – technology, thank God, has gotten to the point when what used to be three refrigerator-sized racks of equipment and a full board the size of a king bed can now fit in my backpack – and we’re working on new music as we’re driving in the car to a venue or in our hotel room, and when we come home, everybody works in their homes," he says. "So we've kind of got this groove down to the point we’re kind of having our cake and eating it too." Rick Rubin is producing the album, as he did for Minutes to Midnight and A Thousand Suns. He elaborated some on his role in the making of the album, and why the band seems to be making progress faster than usual: "Typically we'll have a once-a-week meeting to go listen to the songs that they're coming up with and talk about them. For so early in the project, they are much further along than they have been on the last two albums we did. On Thousand Suns' there were still a lot of irons in the fire. We knew, okay, we can't do this forever. Let's leave this batch and we'll come back and address it when we start up again.'" In March, Kerrang Magazine held an interview with Chester Bennington on progress with the band, and how they have come to find balance between the different sides of the band and tapping into each of them. "We've found our stride right now. It's really a prolific phase for the band; we've found a place where everyone is really happy and feels like their voice is being heard. One thing that Mike and I discussed early on in the writing process was that we wanted to focus on trying to keep things up-tempo. There's some dark stuff, too, but our fans can tell that even in the darker stuff there's always a glimmer of hope, and that's what we write the songs about. It's not finding the positive twist on even the darkest moments; we never want people to feel any hopelessness." The album is said to have a more high tempo bent than LP's last few albums. The band needed more of those kinds of songs to keep the energy of their live concerts up and have good singles out. The band has been writing more lyrical material based on relationships, citing that relationships are what they are good at. However, it seems that the band will not be using the heavier guitars traditional of their old style: "Over the previous two records, we were trying hard to break out of the nu-metal box that we'd found ourselves in. It's easy to characterise us as that, based on HBT and Meteora, when we were a nu-metal band. But we knew there was more to us than that. And, with the exception of the metal seven-string guitar tone that we had on the first two records - which I think is the reason a lot of people like the band - I feel we've found a place where we're finally comfortable in our skin." In an interview with HitFix Mike had said that, while making the new album, “it almost felt like a drug trip.” He then followed with "we realized we'd run away from the things we started with" and that "We were looking to redefine everything." Track Listing Japanese Bonus Track Australian Tour Edition (Bonus Disc) NOTE: On the back of the CD, "New Divide" and "In the End" are listed in reverse order. ''Living Things Remixed'' (2013) ''Living Things (Acapellas and Instrumentals) Release Dates See also * ''Reliving Things Category:Linkin Park Discography